Page 162 of Sin Like the Devil

“Fuck.”

I crack open an eye. “What?”

Ripley hides her mud-streaked face in her hands. “Fuck!”

“Can you have a mental breakdown quietly?”

“This isn’t a game, Nox. Raine is upstairs all alone right now. I haven’t seen Xander either. Who is going to keep Raine safe?”

“Maybe you should’ve thought of that before setting me up!”

Yanking on her cuffs, she tries unsuccessfully to break the chains several times. Even going as far as to wedge her foot between the two halves and attempt to break them apart that way. It’s entertaining to watch her struggle.

Ripley winces at the sight of blood oozing down her tattooed arms. Her wrists are a raw mess, still healing from our last altercation. The cuffs are digging deep into the scabbed-over wounds.

“Goddammit,” she hisses. “You know what? You’re right. I shouldn’t have set you up. I’m not a piece of shit like you.”

“Debatable. What was the price?”

Ripley glowers at me, lips sealed.

“Come on.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“He didn’t agree to get himself beaten to hell for free. I get it… You provoke me, get me thrown in some dank hole and out the picture. Skip off into the sunset, right?”

“Something like that.”

“So. What was the price?”

Licking her lips, she ducks her gaze. “Enough pills to off himself with no questions asked.”

I whistle under my breath. “Now we’re talking. I guess he kinda got his wish. Still think you’re not a piece of shit?”

Eyes squeezing shut, Ripley tilts her head back against the wall. Stray tears break through the thick coating of mud on her face and leave winding trails.

“I wanted you dead… more than I wanted him alive.”

“Trading lives, huh?”

“You’re one to talk.” She sucks in an uneven breath. “I wanted to call it off. Now he’s dead anyway. His body will disappear along with his records. There will be no one left to ask any questions.”

Her broken hush causes some strange feeling to bloom in my chest. It isn’t pity. I could never pity someone like Ripley; she isn’t deserving of it. Neither of us are.

I understand what it’s like to commit evil in order to survive. To become the villain to keep others safe. It’s precisely why I tried to kill her. And why she did the exact same thing back.

“You know…” she trails off.

“What?”

“It’s just that… If we’d stopped trying to kill each other and focused on everyone else who poses a threat, we would’ve had a far better chance of survival.”

The bitch just read my mind.

But I won’t tell her that.

“Yeah, I prefer taking my chances.”

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